How good performance can SSD get on SATA2 instead of SATA3?

[unseengundam101]

I am seriously considering buying a SSD for laptop. However, my laptop only has support for SATA 2, not 3.

Looks like most drive are SATA 6 and they sure do seem to take advantage of it. How much limited will there performance be on a SATA 3?

I am thinking about picking a 250 GB Samsung 840 drive. I know this should kill my 5400 rpm and revive this laptop at least!

 

[Jocelyn84]

Just do it as there really won't be any felt performance loss or difference. I have two SSDs in mine, and despite the M3 being on Sata II (Optibay), it still pulls off these kind of 4k read/write speeds.

 

[unseengundam101]

Just do it as there really won't be any felt performance loss or difference. I have two SSDs in mine, and despite the M3 being on Sata II (Optibay), it still pulls off these kind of 4k read/write speeds.

Hmm, this makes me wonder what kind of speeds my current HHD is getting on my laptop. I should go do a test to check out results. It should give me a better idea of my performance gains!

 

[Jocelyn84]

Hmm, this makes me wonder what kind of speeds my current HHD is getting on my laptop. I should go do a test to check out results. It should give me a better idea of my performance gains!

When I said you won't feel a difference I meant between Sata II & Sata III, not hdd to ssd.
Something I also forgot to mention are the access times. They're a very big reason why going from an hdd to an ssd is such a huge upgrade that you will actually feel.

 

[zaanton]

@Jocelyn84 - My scores an AMD APU A6-3410MX with PX-256M3, significant lower.

 

[Jocelyn84]

@Jocelyn84 - My scores an AMD APU A6-3410MX with PX-256M3, significant lower.

What kind of laptop do you have?
Intel chipsets traditionally do better than those of AMD even with desktop systems. Also, some laptops get limited/bottlenecked by certain manufacturers with their bios implementation.

Edit: Here it is on Sata III in case you were interested (Asrock Z77E-ITX/3570K)

 

[zaanton]

I have ProBook 6465b, it has SATA limited to 3Gb/s, APU + A60M FCH should support SATA 6Gb/s but HP limited it (most probably in BIOS but i've never got definitive answer from HP support). Nevertheless, M3 is really fast and feel it a little bit snappier than my previous m4 128gb.

 

[Jocelyn84]

I have ProBook 6465b, it has SATA limited to 3Gb/s, APU + A60M FCH should support SATA 6Gb/s but HP limited it (most probably in BIOS but i've never got definitive answer from HP support). Nevertheless, M3 is really fast and feel it a little bit snappier than my previous m4 128gb.

Yes, Samsung did the same thing by limiting the optical bay to Sata II (They used Sata port 2 instead of 1), but they at least left the main bay (port 0) alone giving my M5 Pro ~1100 in AS SSD. Anyway, I agree and wouldn't really worry about the numbers too much. FWIW your M3 access times look better than M4 times on Sata III, so I'd continue to be happy with your system. My only advice in the future would be to do quite a bit of reading & searching on Notebookreview.com forums, prior to making a purchase. That way you'll know the speeds of the Sata ports.

 

[zaanton]

When I was buying 6465b the sata speed was the least important thing. I love my 6465b for build quality, support and work time on battery. Even cpu and gpu performance are more than sufficiante for my daily usage. With M3 my 6465b is "near the perfect" office and light gaming notebook.

 

[ShintaiDK]

What makes SSDs fast is that you go from 14000us seektime to 65us

SATA2 vs SATA6 is close to irrelevant, unless you transfer large files. And even then its not the big disaster.

 

[Hulk]

I have an Intel 330 SATA III on my desktop and upgraded my 2006 Dell laptop to my previous desktop SSD, an Intel 320 SATA II.
Three observations:
1. Yes the 320 SATA II benchmarked much worse than the 330. Also the 320 is running IDE mode which handicaps it even more.
2. The 5400rpm drive in the laptop was so slow that the upgrade to the SSD felt (and still feels) amazing. I have no desire for a new laptop now.
3. Even compared to my desktop the real world difference in performance is pretty small. So maybe photoshop takes 1 second more to load? Don't get me wrong I like speed as much as the next guy around here but sometimes you've gotta be realistic. Take the relatively cheap upgrade for huge gains and just move on...

 

[tracerbullet]

I know this should kill my 5400 rpm and revive this laptop at least!

It most definitely will. SATA 2 / 3, sure, there's a difference, but compared to what you have now... Poor comparison might be deciding between a Porsche and a Ferrari when you're currently driving a... riding a bicycle.

 

[Hulk]

It most definitely will. SATA 2 / 3, sure, there's a difference, but compared to what you have now... Poor comparison might be deciding between a Porsche and a Ferrari when you're currently driving a... riding a bicycle.

Exactly.

 

[groberts101]

what gets most folks even more.. is when you try switching back to using the HDD after you've used the SSD for a few weeks.

It'll make you think that the system is broken since you don't remeber it being that slow before the swap. lol

 

[unseengundam101]

what gets most folks even more.. is when you try switching back to using the HDD after you've used the SSD for a few weeks.

It'll make you think that the system is broken since you don't remeber it being that slow before the swap. lol

That won't happen to me, I actually have a SSD on my Desktop. But computer I use most of the time (work PC) has a slow HHD. Man, it takes forever to respond and IT department can't give out a SSD at work due to budget.

My laptop also has a HHD now, but plan to fix that very soon!